There are always lots of great events in NYC, but finally we have one in New Jersey that includes some great local cooks and now great local Homebrewers!   20 amazing Homebrewers will be competing for some great prizes at this years’ Hoboken Volunteers Annual Chili Cook-Off & Homebrewing Contest.  Why should that interest you?  Besides supporting a wonderful charity; there are People Choice awards for the best chili and the best homebrew.  That means you will get to sample over 20 different chili’s and just as many home brewed beers to help pick this years People Choice award!  Come down to the Elks Club in Hoboken on Sat Feb 25th from 2-6pm to be part of this wonderful event to sponsor HOPE CAP!  http://www.facebook.com/events/274452915942327/

As many of you know I have a handy chart that shows how many calories are in your beer.  Today I got a question about how exactly did I get the numbers, well here is the nitty gritty of how to do it using good old math! Read the rest of this entry »

I brew year round and in the NorthEast it can get pretty chilly, down right cold working in the garage through the winter.  Not to mention the water coming out of the hose is no more then 50 degrees in the winter.  I’ve spent countless time in my garage cleaning equipment as my hands have gone numb from the cold.  I must be a moron because it has taken me years to finally figure out I should get some waterproof gloves.  A quick trip to home depot, 2 pairs of gloves, and about 8 bucks has finally saved me from a winter of numb hands.

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This book came to me as a Chirstmas gift this year.  I’ve been struggling with growing hops the last two years.  While the hops bines usually grow well I have not had the yeilds I would have liked.  As you can imagine, I was very excited to get this book to help me with the finer or more complex details of growing hops.

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So a couple weeks ago fellow homebrewer and IronBrewer participant Scott Stroh (aka @corosis) threw down a public challenge of a mini IronBrewer.  How could I say no to that?

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A couple weeks ago I bit the bullet and ordered a brewstand from Brewsteel.com.  While a simple single tier stand, I wanted to make a change to the stand to add a shelf to hold a propane tank.  I emailed Kurt at Brewsteel and he told me it wasn’t a problem.  Now I’ve talked to Kurt a whole bunch since I made up my mind to get a stand built.  One of the things that has held me back was the cost and something I spoke to Kurt a great deal about, basically getting exactly what I needed because price was an issue.  After my initial email to Kurt about the shelf, he emailed me about some new options that he had for his brewstands.  Basically Kurt is creating another line of his brewstands that you can bolt together; you get a bunch of large pieces and you assemble it yourselft.  The reason he suggested this to me was the several hundered dollars I could save in shipping charges.  While I appreciated the thoughtfulness of the suggestion and I think the assemble it yourself method is pretty cool, I opted to get the 1 solid frame since I brew 50-60 times a year, I wanted something that was going to hold up under the stress I will be applying to this rig.  So far the customer service has been great with this build, looking forward to seeing the photos as the construction of the stand starts.